 Okay, bueno, buenas tardes a todos. Good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to welcome everyone on behalf of text, the Texas Coalition for Heritage Spanish and Coral, the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning. Thank you for joining us today for our hangout. Our hangout today is about using Vokey for a successful student engagement experience with Spanish heritage learners. Before we get started, before I introduce our speaker today, I just want to give a few bits of information that might be interesting to you. First of all, so this is our, I think our second or third hangout this fall, and we are planning to have a couple more hangouts in the spring semester. So please look out for that information. We're probably going to have one right when we begin the spring semester and one later on maybe around March or April. And just want to remind you that text is part of Coral and we have a lot of open educational materials and resources and information to share for you Spanish teachers, heritage Spanish teachers. We want to encourage you to visit our website. I think we can share it in a minute on the Heritage Spanish website if you don't know it. And we want to highlight that we have some new in case you haven't been with us before. We've been showcasing some new professional development modules on our website that have been created based on some workshops that we give here in Austin. So please check that out. We will share the link for that as well. And speaking of summer workshops, we have dates for our next workshop, which is going to be a two day workshop June 24 and 25. Next summer, it's going to be a dual modality workshop with some people in person and some people online. So please look out for information about that and sign up for our newsletter if you are not already signed up so you can get all our updates and information. Okay, so before we start some of our protocol for the presentation. Elga's going to speak for about 20 minutes and then we are going to have an activity where we're going to go into breakout rooms. And then we're going to come back for the discussion and question and answer section of the presentation. But if you have questions at any time during the presentation, please feel free to use the chat feature you can write your questions there. You can ask me questions in Spanish or in English or in the two together is fine, as you wish. I think he's going to speak in English and Spanish. Both languages are welcome. And so, I think is there anything I forgot. I didn't introduce myself. Sorry. I'm a co-director, along with my colleague Flavia Belpoliti who is right there for texts. And we are very happy to host another one of these hangouts and we're hoping to have many more in the future. So today, anything else I missed? Sarah Flavia. Are we ready? Okay, great. So we are happy to have today Elga Sepulveda Suarez who is from the Houston ISD. She's originally from Puerto Rico, and she's been teaching here for over six years. And Elga always likes to incorporate technology tools to engage her students in learning. So today I know that we are all struggling to keep our students engaged with this online remote learning situation. And so it's always good to have fresh new ideas. And today she's going to share with us how she uses Boqui for a successful student engagement experience, particularly with Spanish heritage speakers. Elga, if you're ready, the word has come to you. And thank you very much again. Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here this afternoon, sharing some of my experiences with my students. So I'm going to be speaking in Spanish, in English, because originally, as I was speaking earlier, the presentation was in English because I had presented it at a conference. And now I focused more on, well, it was a longer presentation about different technological tools, but I focused this time on Boqui, especially because of everything that is happening in the field of education due to the pandemic. Looking for different ways to motivate students to continue working in the classroom without managing them with the same of always. Because of course, sometimes we know some new technological resources and we want to use them and use them, and the students are already tired. So I was looking for other alternatives and here I met Boqui. So let's see, I'm going to share with you what are the advantages and disadvantages of the tool, some benefits within the classroom, not only traditional, but also virtual. And also some examples of how I have incorporated them in my classes. And I'm going to show you the examples of some of my students. So let's start here. So I wanted to start with this quote by Benjamin Franklin, tell me and forget, teach me and remember, involve me and learn. So in this process, where we are incorporating technology in the classroom, the students have the opportunity with several technological resources to be able to get involved in that learning process. And when they get involved, they learn because they are entering that topic, they are simply reading something to memorize it. Memorization is important, but through technology we can get involved in their teaching process and in that way not only they learn, but they even have the opportunity to explain to other people. And we are talking about students who are digital natives, what we know as digital natives, but at the same time we find ourselves with digital natives who do not know how to work with many technological tools. So we as teachers see us in that obligation to teach them too. So this has really become a teaching process for all of us. So I'm going to talk a little bit about Voki. Voki is a technological tool that can be used both in traditional and virtual classes. Through this resource, students have the opportunity to create a character, which we also call the famous avatar, that moves and speaks according to the text we produce. So let's talk a little bit about the text later. But basically they work on a theme, the theme that you present, that I'm going to give you different examples later, and they create their own account, which is a totally free account, we are going to go to that later too, and they have the opportunity to create their own character. And then they put their physical characteristics if they want to, if not to invent a new character, to make some animal, to do... Well, what they actually have is to use their imagination. And at the same time they are going to include that text, which is important, which can be so written as oral, and they are going to incorporate it into their character. I'm going to explain some of the benefits of Voki in the classroom. It improves the reading comprehension. How? Well, I'm going to explain it to you. Suppose we are reading a story, a poem. So instead of directly asking the student to explain the story in their own words, or to give a different ending to the story, or to explain, or to... or to give characteristics of some character in the story, or to explain it in the voice of the narrator, etc., we can do it through Voki. How can we do it? Well, you can ask the question, for example, how would you change the ending to the story through an avatar, which is the avatar that relates the ending to that story. So the student will create his avatar, create his text, because he has to write it, either on the computer or by hand, as he prefers, but if he is going to say it, or if he is going to record it, then I write it on the computer, I see it and the voice is recorded. So that is a strategy of reading comprehension. If we can see if the student understood the reading. If he understood the story, how do we know if he understood the story? Well, because he changed the ending, or explained the story problem, or he could enter the main character, and talk from the point of view of the main character, or the antagonist, that is, there are different ways to measure the reading comprehension. Improve the effectiveness of the oral and written language. Why? Well, because through the avatar, the student is going to express himself orally. So we can measure, how he expresses himself in an oral way, in a written way, because the student has to go through that process of writing, of writing his text. On the page we are going to see that if the student, for example, has problems with the computer microphone, and maybe he cannot record, there are other options that I am going to show you. Increase the creativity of the student. Of course, they are creating a character, they have the opportunity to place the characteristics that they want, to change the background of the avatar, to place accessories, the style of clothes, if you wear a hat, if you don't wear a hat, it can make the avatar look like them, or it can look like another person, or it can be an animal, or whatever they want. They are going to use their imagination. And we know, as teachers, that creativity is something that we have to focus on in our students. And sometimes, with all this technological saturation, sometimes creativity is missing. So this tool gives us that space so that they can work with their creativity. It can be used for some special project, some debate that is held in class, or a personal presentation. For example, you as a teacher can also create your vocabulary by presenting yourself to the class, or maybe explaining some instruction. Obviously, it can be personalized, as I explained previously. It can be inserted, but be careful, here you have to have several vocabulary accounts. A free vocabulary account, you can share your vocabulary through the e-mail. Now, if you use a account where you are paying a subscription, that vocabulary can be shared on other internet pages. But really, with a free account, you can do a lot of things. You can get a lot of advantages. I'm going to show you that when I share my page. It helps to improve the pronunciation of the words. That's why I say that it measures oral disabilities, and it works with several linguistic stresses. Obviously, it favors the incorporation of the tics in the classroom, and the development of digital skills, because students have to work not only on the e-mail page, but even knowing their e-mail, because they will share the e-mail through the e-mail. In my experience, I have to teach my students that they are from a higher school how to use an e-mail. So, this really pushes the students to be able to manage these digital skills and develop them even more. And also, as you have to work with a written text, you can work with the Word tool. For example, writing in Word, which seems something that we can work on, but to what extent our students can work with that, how we can help them improve their skills. So, in general, we can see that you can have a content or share a content in a different and fun way. Attractive for the student. This is some captures that I take so that we can give you an example, but I can show you my page in a moment for you to see. Here is a avatar, and you can see that here you can add eyes, clothes can also be changed, background can also be changed, but I'm going to show you in a moment so that you can see it from my page. So, here in the same way, here is the part of recording, here in this case I created a doctor as an avatar character, and there it will proceed to the final part of the vocal which is when one records. Okay? I'm going to show you more in a moment. So, advantage and disadvantage, because I like that we see the two parts. In the disadvantage, it is an attractive way to have the students working and developing their digital skills, their oral stress, and their written stress. Besides that, not only do they have an option to record their voice, but there are several. So, it is an excellent tool to learn a new language, because here, before teaching heritage speakers and native speakers, I was teaching Spanish 1 and Spanish 2, and it was a good opportunity to make simple questions for the students who were learning Spanish as a second language especially those students who don't have much to talk about because they are learning a new language. This is also an option. Advantages. Well, this part is... I'm going to show you on my page because here it says to write what the vocalist says, it has to be less than 100 words. And now, the vocalist, as I mentioned, gives them options of how to express themselves. One can do it through recording, through the computer or through the phone if the microphone doesn't work, or if you have problems with the phone and the computer. One can redact it, copy and paste it to the vocalist and the vocalist reads it to the computer and the vocalist reproduces it. And it comes out exactly the same as the microphone on your computer. Also, the recording is 60 seconds, that is, a minute to record. So what is going to be said in that answer has to be concise and precise. That also helps us in the synthesis depending on what we are looking for. And it can be used as a presentation for the character. It's not going to be a character acting with other characters or anything that will always be used as a presentation. So here I'm going to share some of my experiences and here I'm going to include the examples. In personal presentations, for example, presentation as a teacher, really, introduction and conclusion of projects as an exit ticket you can suggest the creation of a vocalist where the student asks a question, right? Maybe a summary of what he learned in class and the student proceeds to create his character and then he can share with you what he learned in class. The same as the question of understanding a reader that he has the example before and reading. For example, we assume that there are some students who have problems with the pronunciation of some letter, some word through the vocalist you can motivate to practice, read and be the vocalist through the vocalist that is representing you. If you allow me now I'm going to share a moment because I want to share my page so that you can see here it is with the sound. Well, here I have several options. This was one that I believed what was different like a cute background so that it was a little jocoso so I'm going to reproduce it because this is already created but briefly I will teach the options we have. Good afternoon to all my name is Elga Sepulveda and I will be your teacher during this semester. I hope you can familiarize yourself with the tutorials of the course and that our first virtual meeting we can get to know better. As you can see, it's simple different, jocoso it was a different way for personal presentation. Of course, it doesn't have to be like this. Notice that here I already have my account created so it's a free account that I use. Here you can see the different options. Notice that, well, it's cute but it can be a ring it can be a dolphin. I'm going to tell you, the only ones unless you have a subscription these avatars that have stars are the only ones that can't be used unless you have a subscription. If they don't have stars then they can be used because they are included in the free account. Notice that there are several avatars to choose from. We don't have many options there are several. There are animals, characters there are many options. The ones that have stars are the only ones that can't be used look at a baby, red wig if we are working on a story you can incorporate red wig we have here a number of options that they have to make their Vokey and notice that these are the options that are with subscription. Here they have animals and anime characters that are the favorites of my students anime characters are the ones that are most used in other animals here are characters that also have to do with anime characters and there are several options to explore that's why I tell them that the Vokey motivates creativity because the student has the opportunity to continue creating and to be able to do I'm going to take this as an example let's suppose that I want it to him then you can verify that I can put shirt I can change his clothes if I want that doesn't have to be like that but I can change it then here it tells me that I can have it with that or without that I'm going to remove the hat then we are going to see some glasses then you see that here it has many options to play with the character here they are accessories that you can explore and creating it is already similar to you similar to another person there I removed the mustache the mouth what shape can have the mouth from here there are the backgrounds that you can change in a school there is the background for that the colors of the lips of the eyes if I want them darker here I'm not going to change it put the lips like that there well now I want to record right here are the options when I'm going to record if the microphone obviously here it has to be working on the computer to be able to use it if the microphone does not work suppose that the student has a problem and the microphone does not work then we are going to work with this option this option the audio through the phone if you mark here they give you a number that you do not have to call or you use a code this code and the student calls then when you put the code there gives you the option to record the text that you are going to say and then automatically it goes to the voice that is creating here in this case is this man here that I am creating where to upload the audio from the computer there are resources to do that I have here a page called vocaro which is an online voice recorder which can also be used because suppose that the phone and the microphone of the computer does not work you can go to the vocaro page I do not know if you can see it because I think I will have to share it again but vocaro I will write it later is a page where you can record in a free way and you can download the audio to the computer and then you can go to the voco page and this option is the one of the text suppose that here there are problems with all these options that give then you have the opportunity that the student place then here you are going to look for the language which in this case would be the Spanish and you are going to choose what accent you want if the accent is Spanish, Mexican, Chilean, Argentinian, Mexican-American there you can explore and then here here are the voices that they can change they have voices like extraterrestrial voices of children or kids voices and adult voices or the own voice they do not have those options to be a little creative with the voice and they record and once it is recorded it appears quickly let's see if I can do it I'm going to try to record what I'm saying let's see if we can hear it so I'm recording what I'm presenting right now to see the avatar in action let's see then it says that it is processing so I'm recording what I'm presenting right now quickly just to see the avatar in action then here, as you can see simply when you give it the option of saving it then in the option of saving it you have the opportunity to share it and this is going to happen to your students too see that this has the stars to share it on wikis and blogs however if you want to change it you have to pay a subscription if you simply want to have it for you it will be kept in your library of wikis and so that your students can share it with you you can give it the option of electronic mail and you receive it from your students or copy it and pass it to you the link I'm going to stop sharing a moment because I want to share an example of my students so that later you have the opportunity to work in the breakout rooms with your wikis we are going to work on that so I'm going to share again but with the screen let me put it here this is a student who is in my Spanish class advanced they were working with the theme of values because we are talking about the family and the community and we were talking about values so I'm going to share what she was working on the value that identifies her let's see my name is Andrea Hueso I think the value that identifies me the most is honesty I hate lies I prefer to be hurt by the truth that living a false life that doesn't have reality I like to speak with clarity because I think I'm a predator I'm a liar I take you to places far away but you can never go back I accept that I'm not perfect because I'm human but I always try to say what I feel with rectitude honesty talks a lot about the class of people that you are and justifies that you are an irresponsible mature person I told you it was 60 seconds, but she worked a lot in those 60 seconds. It was a text that she wrote. Obviously the voice is distorted because she wanted to distort her voice. But it's a good exercise, right? That was a good exercise of self-reflection for them. And a good proof of reading because we had read an article about the 10 most important values in society. So she identified more with the value of honesty. That was the advanced class. I'm going to show you another example. Here is a student who, in her case, is a class of natives with mixed heritage speakers. And they were doing a work on the Indians. Incas, Mayas, Aztecas, Taínos, Carives. In her case, she chose the Aztecas. And I just asked her, the exercise was better to measure her oral distress. That she chose a part of her positive bias, a slide, to share it through avatar. So here I share it. Give me a moment. Here, give me this to change the student. In the case of her, it wasn't the anime. She chose another character that wasn't the anime. Well, but here it goes. Hello, my name is Liz Fuentes. I'm going to introduce you to the Mayas. The Mayas are located in a geographical block that covers the entire Yucatan Peninsula and the current Guatemala. The capital city of Aztecas. So there was a brief information about where the Mayas were located and what was their main city. That was a positive bias in her presentation when she did the presentation to the class. In the same way, the last one I was going to introduce was the Aztecas. And she just talked about the main city, the most important of the Aztecas. Of course, these are examples. You can vary this according to your class. In the case of this last alumna, you're not going to see her name, you're not going to see her. You're just going to listen. This is the only alumna who recorded her voice, so to speak. But no, nothing to show her or anything like that. In Mexico, during the 13th century, there was an indigenous tribe called the Aztecas, which was also referred to as the Mexicas. The Mexicas had an empire called the Azteca Empire. At the beginning of the 15th century, the Aztecas began to disappear due to the arrival of the conqueror, such as Hernán Cortés, who took the end of the Azteca Empire. Very well, this student here spoke to us from the Azteca Empire and gave us a little bit of information about how the disappearance of those indigenous people began. As you can see, these are brief examples that I have worked in the classroom, both in the Spanish advanced class, AP Spanish, such as the one of the native speakers and heritage speakers. But you can vary it depending on what you are working on in your class. So now I would like you to spend about 20 minutes for you to work. If you already have your voice account, perfect. If not, it's easy to create it so that you can work with your avatar. And then we return after those 20 minutes for the questions, to talk about the experience and what you think and if you would like to incorporate it into your class. Is that okay? Okay, so in the minutes that we have left, I would like to know if you have any questions or if you would like to share something about how or if you want to use it, if you liked the tool, what did you think? This is a good moment to work with those questions that you have about it. Elga, there was one question in the chat from earlier. I was going to look for it. Lucila asked if you can integrate the voice with some learning management system, like Canvas or one of those? You can incorporate it into the subscription. There are three levels of subscription, which is what I was talking about, if I'm not mistaken, the Group 2, the Breakout Room 2. There are three levels of subscription. The most economical one is 4.99, level 1. And it brings certain benefits. When you pay subscription, you can incorporate it into the learning management system, to wikis, blogs, etc. Because that's one of the advantages of paying subscription. There are other advantages. In level 1, the wikis already have the opportunity to interact with each other. They are not only in presentation mode, like this one, but the wiki can also interact with the other wikis that are part of the classroom. In level 1, there are up to 30 or 40 students, and it's a class that the teacher, the teacher, in level 2, there are 7.99 per month, up to 60 students, and they have the opportunity to create two classes. And from there, you can divide the amount of students that you want for each side. And in the last level, there are 9.99 per month, and they have the opportunity to create six classes, and the wiki is not only going to interact or present itself, but it also creates a wiki to teach other students, so that they have the opportunity to teach other students. These are the different subscriptions that you have with your benefits. Elcan, I didn't understand very well. The teachers have to create the classes and the students' accounts. To share, the teacher, when the subscription is turned off, the class is created and there is a code that the student gives to the student so that they can join. Okay, perfect. And all of that is included in any package that one makes. For example, if it is the level 1 package, it includes everything that I mentioned except the wiki in teaching mode. The wiki teaching, that is included in the 9.99 package, which is level 3. Okay, so all of these three that you have mentioned have costs. The free only includes five students. Five students, exactly. But what I do with the free is, I know that I have it, but I am planning to work with the first subscription from January to try to incorporate and see how the interaction works between the avatars in the classroom. But with the free, what I do is that, all the students can create their account because it is a free account and they only sign up as students, they share it with me through e-mail or through the link, they send it to me by Teams, which is what we use. And then there I can see their work, because I don't believe in a classroom, because really my classroom would be five, so I don't believe in the classroom of classes, even though I can do it. I simply tell them to share it with me through Teams, a link or the e-mail. The e-mail says the name of the student, so I don't have a problem anymore. I know who did what and who didn't. Perfect. Yes, thank you. No problem. Any other questions? Anything that you liked? If you want to incorporate it? Yes, I hope you like it. I hope you like it. If someone wants to share it, how do you think about using it with their students? I've been using it for many years, I was sharing it with my group, my experience, and in the end I had to put a rule that they didn't use the electronic voice, because students sometimes look for the most distorted voice, which is computer, and then it worked very well, but I had to tell them that I wasn't going to accept the electronic voice because it was really... I wasn't really evaluating it. I had a concept for those who want to use Goki. Exactly, yes. That's right. Yes, we were talking about that one can tell the students exactly what are the specifications. It has to be their original voice. Exactly. In my case, the instructions were like... I knew that those who want to use it as an example gave them several options so they could see that they can distortion the voice and it's something that you tell them from the beginning, as they mentioned. They can't distortion their voice or if it's something more informal, it can be a little more flexible, but usually, especially for advanced classes, or the native classes, I don't leave them because I like to evaluate how they express themselves. In the Goki that I created a few seconds ago, well, the minute I shared, I saw the variety of Spanish. Yes. And it sounds like... I liked that it wasn't my voice, but my accent, because there are other accents. So I see that the free version allows you to use other accents. And that's interesting so that the student can hear what he's saying as if it were a accent from Puerto Rico, from Peru, from Chile. I thought it was more interesting. Exactly. I was thinking of using that for the project I have on the countries that will present a little bit about the country, using one of the voices of the country that I investigated. It's a very good idea. Excellent. I love it because you can also know the accent so that we don't all have the same accent. Exactly. And a question. Another recommendation with the experience you have had or someone else who has had the experience, let's say I'm going to use it this week because I'm thinking about the Spanish countries that are doing the research. What things to take into account? Definitely, what we mentioned about the Distortioned Voice, let them know, because that's what they want to see, that they can appreciate that accent and Distortioned Voice, they can't appreciate that. I think that in terms of technology there are several options. They have several options for that text or for what they're going to say. It's a matter of knowing it. There are the options but most of all, that's the voice. Because since that part is evaluated, my recommendation always goes for the Distortioned Voice, as well as the other professors. I don't want anyone else to have any other recommendation that has worked with Vokey, but I always say that. We can continue talking, but I think some of you already have to go and it's already six o'clock. So before continuing, if anyone else asks anything else, I want to remind you, we have a survey, there's a link on the chat that we would love for everybody to please fill out, to let us know what you thought of today's Hangout. And also, stay tuned because we will have more Hangouts in the spring semester. I just wanted to say that before people start leaving, but are there any more comments or questions for Elga? Muchas gracias a todos que están escribiendo en el chat. Gracias a ustedes. Me encantan estos momentos pero de compartir todos. A veces no somos muchos los profesores de Nativos y Heritage y me encanta cuando nos unimos a compartir nuestras experiencias. Exactamente. Muchísimas gracias, Elga, por compartir tu experiencia y tu conocimiento sobre Bocchi. Está muy interesante. Gracias a ustedes. Muchas gracias.